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cityscape

Torched High Park Playground Gets Needed Repairs

HGTV's Mike Holmes helped repair the arson-damaged Jamie Bell Adventure Playground on Saturday.

By • Photos by Christopher Drost

When High Park’s Jamie Bell Adventure Playground burned in March, as a result of arson, it wasn’t long before offers of help and financial assistance began to pour in. On Saturday, HGTV personality Mike Holmes led a crew of workers and community volunteers in an all-day construction effort, the goal of which was to restore the playground’s castle to something like its pre-fire state.

Despite the best efforts of Holmes and the yellow-shirted army of volunteers, the project ended up being not completely finished by day’s end. (Holmes blamed the day’s unusually hot weather.) Even so, the playground was in much better shape than it had been at the start.

The castle was originally constructed in 1999, with volunteer labour. Jamie Bell, the site’s namesake, was a community activist who was instrumental in mustering community support for building the playground. He died in 2002.

The day’s effort was filmed, and will air on Holmes’ TV show Holmes Makes it Right.

You could catch it then, or, in the meantime, you could just click through our gallery, above.

Comments

  • eh

    Reading articles like this restores my faith in people…

  • Jen

    Do you know when it’s going to be finished and if it’s currently open to the public?

    • http://twitter.com/drostphoto Christopher Drost

      The plan as of Saturday afternoon was to have the full public unveil on Tuesday. Parts of it kids are welcome to play on already but the rebuilt section should be open this week.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jo-No/100002166500304 Jo No
        • http://twitter.com/jnyyz jnyyz

          check ward13.ca for updates. It will not be fully open on tuesday as they are still looking for volunteers to move wood chips around and under the structures so that the playground can pass a safety inspection.

  • http://twitter.com/wklis W. K. Lis

    Delayed opening to this week because of last week’s heat.

    I’ll say more, but have to pause for this commercial…

  • Downlowfilm

    Not an accurate article that project was weeks of work and one day of voilenteers speeding mulch … Bad journalism , research yo s*ht

    • http://www.facebook.com/rianna.tp Rianna T-P

      Torontoist has been covering this since the playground was set on fire. This is an update. That’s totally standard practice in the news industry. Good journalism, research yo spell*ng.